Tag Archives: ICLEI

ECOLOGISTICS STAKEHOLDER CONSULTATION MEETING

Today the whole world is facing serious climate change issues, as a result of uncontrolled carbon emissions from various sectors mainly transport sector. Our Kochi is one of the areas that suffers the most from its bitter effects. Unscientific transportation is one of the major problems facing Kochi in this regard. Based on this, several projects are being formulated and implemented to make Kochi’s transportation sector more environmentally friendly. The Kochi Municipal Corporation, with a view to address this pressing issue, included a plan to introduce a new policy for freight transport in its annual Budget for the year 2021-22. The project is carried out under the coordination of C-HED with the support of ICLEI South Asia under ‘EcoLogistics: Low Carbon Freight for Sustainable Cities’ supported by International Climate Initiative (IKI) project. As part of the project, a stakeholder consultation meeting was convened on March 24, 2021 to discuss the draft action plan for freight transport in Kochi. The meeting was held in the presence of Hon’ble Mayor of Kochi, Deputy Mayor, Secretary, Councillor Sri. Antony Kureethara, other officials of Kochi Municipal Corporation, RTO, representatives from KMTA, KMRL, various trade and industrial organizations.

Biodiversity strategy and action plan for Kochi

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The Kochi Corporation has prepared a local biodiversity strategy and action plan which sets 29 goals for the city to achieve on biodiversity conservation by 2025. The city is the first in the country to develop a ‘scientifically informed and participatory’ action plan, according to Mayor Soumini Jain’s message in the plan.

The plan was readied as part of the Integrated Subnational Action for Biodiversity (Interact-Bio) project being implemented in the city by the civic administration’s Centre for Heritage, Environment and Development (C-HED), which is collaborating with ICLEI-South Asia. The plan is meant to function as a tool that the local government can use to take action related to the conservation of biodiversity and climate resilience. It identifies nine focus areas including islands, lakes, agriculture, green and open spaces, inland waterbodies, marshes and mangroves, and seashore and sandbars. The 29 goals under these focus areas include mapping of agricultural land, identification of new cultivable land, conservation of paddy fields, transitioning to a low emission city and protecting green spaces.

Actions to be taken include setting up decentralised sewage treatment plants, developing a geo-referenced map of inland waterbodies, establishing a special purpose vehicle for management of the Vembanad Lake and sea-wall construction using eco-friendly methods like setting up mangrove nurseries.

Climate Smart Cities

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Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India is implementing a project named ‘Climate Smart Cities’ in Kochi city which is commissioned by Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, and Nuclear Safety (BMU). The project is implemented by GIZ. The project is aimed to develop climate-friendly solutions for urban infrastructure projects and area-based development as well as the measuring and monitoring of the GHG emissions.

The main focus of the project is to mitigation and adaptation to climate change as well as disaster resilience by 2020, promote selected climate-relevant solutions for urban infrastructure and increase the capacity of cities and regional institutes contributing to reduction of Greenhouse Gas Emissions, develop a concept for an MRV system to document and evaluate the long term envisaged mitigation impact of the measures supported in the three partner cities, disseminate German and international experiences for including climate aspects into Smart City projects through a networking platform and experience exchanges in between Indian smart cities and training institutes.

c-hed is coordinating the project for the city and the programme is ongoing.

Capacity building program – Ecologistics

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A two day capacity building workshop on sustainable urban freight management in Kochi in association with ICLEI South Asia and Kochi Metro Rail Limited, on 7th and 8th June 2019. The focus of the capacity-building workshop was to prioritize strategies that promote goods transportation with minimal impacts on air quality, noise, health and fatalities and injuries, besides reducing traffic congestion and GHG emissions.

More than 175 stakeholders such as government officials and representatives of central and state government agencies, private stakeholders, freight lorry associations and trade, industry and research organizations, attended the workshop. In the workshop, National and international freight experts presented sector-specific learning and strategies, as well as good practices from developed and developing countries. Besides technical presentations, there was brainstorming on sustainable urban freight management strategies in Kochi.

Solutions Project (Sharing Opportunities for Low carbon Urban Transporation)

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The UN-Habitat supported European Union funded SOLUTIONS (Sharing Opportunities for Low carbon Urban transporTatION) is one of the major ongoing project of Cochin City. The project aims to support the exchange on innovative and green urban mobility solutions between cities from Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Mediterranean. The project also focuses on the uptake of innovative and green urban mobility solutions across the world through dialogues and exchanges.

Cochin is one of the take-up cities and has been teamed-up with the City of Hangzhou (China) with ICLEI as the take-up Coach. As a next step towards this project, a team led by the Project Manager of SOLUTIONS, Oliver Lah, visited Cochin and interacted with the officials and other stakeholders. The project is progressing and is coordinated by c-hed for Cochin.

The project is being coordinated by c-hed for the Kochi Municipal Corporation.

AsianCitiesAdapt : Learning Exchange

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Twenty cities from all around South Asia came together in Cochin on October 30th, 2013 to learn from each other on the issue of adaptation to climate change at the AsianCitiesAdapt: Learning Exchange, co-organized by Kochi Municipal Corporation and ICLEI South Asia.

The workshop, that took place on 30th-31st October 2013, gathered an impressive line-up of high level local representatives from India, the Philippines, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Nepal, who discussed solutions on how cities can adapt to climate change, together with climate experts and other practitioners from India, Southeast Asia and Europe.

Dignitaries included Mayor Maizan Ali Manik, Male city (Maldives); Mayor Zulfikar Ali, Mongla and Mayor Shamim Al Razi, Singra (Bangladesh) and Deputy Mayor Tikender S Panwar, from Shimla (India).

The workshop, a forerunner to the closure of the project “AsianCitiesAdapt – Impacts of Climate Change in Target Cities in India and the Philippines and Local Adaptation Strategies” – brought together science, policy and practice to help four cities in India (Howrah, Madurai,Vishakapatnam and Kochi) and four cities in the Philippines (Baguio, Dagupan, San Fernando, Tuguegarao) take the first steps towards developing an appropriate adaptation strategy.

The entire programme was coordinated by c-hed for the Kochi Municipal Corporation.